PNINA WERBNER @ HOMING: THE ILLUSION OF SIMULTANEITY – WHEN HOME LOSES ITS ‘HOMELINESS’

On her visit to HOMInG, in November 2017, anthropologist Pnina Werbner (Keele University) gave a lecture on the prospects and limitations of migrant simultaneous engagement in two or more countries. By revisiting the work of innumerable theorists and researchers, from DuBois and Schutz to contemporary scholars of transnationalism, Werbner suggests that migration tends to separate the everyday life worlds of movers and stayers, over time, despite the mediation of ICTs. The latter cannot ultimately replace a lack of embodied social relationships. While retaining the “pristine home” may be an illusion, the ritualized ways of reproducing some aspects of it, from afar, open up a major research field.